Those former department store windows facing 5th Street, or the windows that create the 5th Gallery at the Racine Art Museum (RAM) are complete! While standing outside the museum the current University of Wisconsin-Madison Art Associate Professor Kim Cridler chatted after just finishing the installation of her exhibition for the coming year titled, “My Wisconsin Home.” The theme references the RAM's commitment to discover the aesthetic meaning to 'place' this summer through multiple artists' interpretations and their individual media.

Cridler studied metalsmithing at the University of Michigan and completed a Masters of Fine Ars in Metals from the State University of New York at New Paltz where UW-Milwaukee Art Professor Venetia Dale also obtained her MFA in Metals (Venetia Dale currently exhibits at Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum). These techniques involve those honed from small-scale metalsmithing that incorporate meticulous jewelry making together with welding oversized sculpture.

For this particular RAM project, Cridler applied for a two-year grant named the Vilas Award that provided monies and allowed the artist the luxury of graduate student Andrea Miller to assist in the completion of the windows. RAM's 5th Gallery offers a narrow and long exhibition space, over 50 linear feet and an extraordinarily high ceiling. The RAM's Executive Director Bruce Pepich believes the unusual gallery challenges the career of any artist invited to exhibit for the 12-month commitment where the windows change once or twice during that time.

Cridler agreed with Pepich, and talking outside on 5th Street while bearing the August heat she is unable to contain her enthusiasm for this project. The vessels she completed through the grant funds are worth the excitement because her sculptures require enormous time, over two years to finish, because the welding entails slow and tedious work. One vessel alone required over 3000 pieces to be welded together. She explained that this RAM tribute to place arises from her desire to remember Wisconsin. Though Cridler was raised in Michigan, she moved near Mazomanie, Wisconsin in 2001, and then expressed with a smile, “Wisconsin stole my heart.”

“The land forms are exquisite and I felt like [in Wisconsin] I was finally home, a place where I could invest in community, a place to belong.” She continued to explain that a place to belong is defined by, “A place to be long enough to see the trees grow tall.”

When Cridler moved to Wisconsin she had small children with sparse time for the metalsmithing she enjoyed. The artist decided to draw whenever she could, and began with what she observed around her. In any spare time she could seek out, Cridler rendered the natural forms surrounding her: the apples, the bees, the lilies and lowly moths. She discovered all that was local to her new home she could draw, and she constantly kept drawing.

These drawings eventually found their metamorphosis in bronze, shell and wax, becoming the natural biology and botany adorning her structural sculptures, the sculptures that represent the objects she acutely remembers from her Michigan childhood. Cridler's very thrifty Dutch aunt never disposed of anything, and her array of vessels honor those people, places and memories metaphorically stored in the objects her aunt saved and Cridler cherishes. The 5th Avenue windows marry Cridler's past lives: a childhood in Michigan, her love of metalsmithing, the vibrant natural environment in Mazomanie together with the extended time spent with her families, at home and at UW-Madison, those people who support her endeavors to pursue art.

The RAM's 5ht Gallery displays the stunning results and includes the sculpture Cridler showed at Madison's 2010 Wisconsin Triennial Pail with Fish (52 by 52 inches), a larger than life pail with tiny bronze fish studded with mother of pearl eyes; the fish swarming and swirling around the circular opening. The sculpture deserves more attention and will receive its due admiration in the exhibition “My Wisconsin Home.” Cridler finished by sharing her gratitude for the RAM, a museum that encouraged her to uncover these sentiments and memories through her art metal to which she exclaimed, "this all has an intimate relationship with people."

Visit Art Talk later this week when an interview with Kim Cridler explores the historical inspiration, process and production for her sculptural vessels in Part II. Cridler discusses the intimacy of vessels, which had their beginnings as functional decorative arts. Visit www.ram.org for more information regarding “My Wisconsin Home.”

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